In 1935 my uncle Joe Brookman drove a Parmalee cab. It was a big Checker cab and in the front there was a place with straps where you could put your luggage on a big kind of running board. In the back there were folding seats and there was room for about four people. When a Parmalee cab came down South 3rd Street and Hooper, where I lived in Williamsburg, and there was no driver and it appeared to be driving by itself, we knew it was Uncle Joe, because Joe was about four foot three and had to sit on many telephone books.

The biggest dose of bad taste since Jerry Springer - the Opera finally hit the West End last night when a tap-dancing Adolf Hitler and his goose-stepping storm troopers brought the house down at the opening night of Mel Brooks's troubled musical comedy, The Producers.

He [Nathan Lane] is not lacking in support, but without him – and I have seen a perfectly serviceable Australian production starring the hugely talented comedian, Reg Livermore – the evening would have been far less successful.

Nathan Lane (left) and Lee Evans are the stars of The Producers US musical The Producers got a rapturous reception on its opening night in London's West End on Tuesday. It was Broadway's biggest recent hit and stars Lee Evans and Nathan Lane for its London run. Lane replaced actor Richard Dreyfuss at the last minute.

Creator and director Mel Brooks told the Theatre Royal crowd: "So much for British reserve, you people should be arrested for disorderly conduct."

The good news is that Nathan Lane is recreating his 2001 Tony award-winning performance in the long-overdue London transfer of the smash Broadway hit The Producers. The bad news is that he is only doing it until January 8, before he leaves to star in a new film version of the show.

But the even better news, for anyone lucky enough to get tickets to see it here in the next nine weeks, is that it reunites Lane with British comedian Lee Evans, his co-star from the 1997 film comedy Mouse Hunt.

In the stage version, his [Mel Brooks'] mad, mischievous adoration of the musical genre knows no restraint. Aided by the terrific zip of Susan Stroman's direction and choreography, The Producers comes across as an insane love letter to old Broadway and to the classic shows and films about putting on a show.

Theatre Director and Choreographer Susan Stroman got her first break in 1987 when she choreographed a revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Flora, the Red Menace. Since then, she has won five Tony awards for her work on musicals Crazy For You, Showboat, Contact, and The Producers. The London production of the latter opens at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, this month

When I arrived at Duthy Hall Studios, rehearsals for The Producers were still in progress so I was shown to an oversized, white, wooden bench in the shape of a heart, to sit down and wait.

London critics on Wednesday hailed the Mel Brooks musical - the story of an unscrupulous showman trying to mount a surefire flop - as a tonic for a gloomy West End, weighed down by overwrought musicals and shadowed by several recent flops.

In the lead-up to The Producers' April opening, co-producer John Frost said it was "such an important show" for restoring confidence in Melbourne's theatre scene.

...

The Producers fell well short of the 12-month residency needed to recoup its $6 million pre-production costs. But Mr Frost said there is enough momentum to achieve this through coming seasons in Brisbane and Sydney.

West End musical The Producers is up for a major award after being nominated in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The Producers - starring Nathan Lane and Lee Evans - opened at the Theatre Royal, on Drury Lane, last week.

It will compete against Sweeney Todd and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for best musical.

You don't jump into talking about The Producers with Richard Dreyfuss. You start out soft. You talk about age, politics, or Steven Spielberg. It is of course all part of a ploy to get him to talk about The Producers - a subject on which, until now, he has remained completely silent.

A funny thing happened on the way to the laughs the other night at "The Producers," Mel Brooks' touring juggernaut now installed at the Auditorium Theatre: For nearly the first half hour, it wasn't funny.

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